


l’appel du vide

by rudderless in an ocean of stars (indelibly_ellie)



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Episode Fix-it, Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, Feels, I know I usually write angst but I swear to RAO this will end happily eventually, Lena Luthor is NOT evil, season five AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-11-27 05:33:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20943089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indelibly_ellie/pseuds/rudderless%20in%20an%20ocean%20of%20stars
Summary: l’appel du vide: a French phrase meaning ‘the call of the void’; commonly used to describe a sudden urge to jump from a great height or any other inexplicable desire to do something that will probably get the person in question killedIn Lena’s case, it ends with her developing the admittedly unhealthy habit of standing on the edge of L-Corp’s roof, wondering if she should let the next stiff breeze decide her fate.(It starts with Kara Danvers finally admitting that she’s Supergirl.)In Kara’s case, it ends with her throwing herself into increasingly dangerous scenarios, even for a girl of steel.(It starts with Lena Luthor walking away.)//A re-write of the season premiere.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kara and Lena deserve a happy ending, and by Rao, they’re gonna get one. Even if it’s only in this fanfiction.
> 
> Starts during THAT scene in the season 5 premiere and then raises a middle finger at canon.

“I’m Supergirl,” Kara says, and Lena feels her heart lurch into her throat. “I’ve always been Supergirl. I should’ve told you so long ago, I know that. But I just kept making excuses because you’ve been _hurt_ so many times and I convinced myself that I was protecting you. And then one day you were so angry with me, with- with _Supergirl_, but you still loved _Kara_... and I just kept thinking if I could be Kara, _just_ Kara, then I could keep you as a friend. I was selfish and scared and I didn’t want to _lose_ you. So I kept pretending and I never stopped. And every time time I kept my secret from you I wasn’t protecting you- I was _hurting_ you, just like everyone else, and I am so, _so_ sorry. I am so _sorry_.”

It is everything Lena has wanted to hear since the words left Lex’s mouth but somehow, it is not _enough_.

Lena finds herself standing frozen, the silence starting to stretch out between them absolute and overwhelming. In this moment, the apocalypse could very well arrive and Lena wouldn’t know it. The building could start crumbling down around them right now and she would be helpless, unable to react, let alone move. In the span of minutes, Kara Danvers has managed to shrink Lena’s entire world down to a mostly empty foyer and the stark realization that for once, Lena Luthor doesn’t know what to do.

She is so incensed that her throat feels tight with it, with this horrible mixture of hurt and rage and _pain_. It feels like someone has wrapped a noose around her neck and pulled the rope tight, so tight that she can barely bring herself to breathe, to swallow down the dark, ugly, nameless thing rising up to fill all the empty spaces between her bones.

“Please say something,” Kara pleads, blue eyes brimming with tears.

Then the coordinator returns and Lena doesn’t think she’s ever been more grateful to be reminded of a schedule in her life. Lena wouldn’t have survived another uninterrupted second staring into those devastated eyes.

“Miss Luthor? You’re on in two minutes.”

The world is starting to expand again but time is still running at half-speed. Andrea is waiting for a story Lena doesn’t think she’ll be able to send and Hope is waiting for a command she doesn’t think she has the ability to give.

Not anymore.

Not after this.

Kara’s speech may not have been enough to soothe the ragged hole in her chest that’s just been festering ever since <strike>she killed her brother</strike> Lex died and decided he wanted his last words to ruin her <strike>like she ruined him</strike>, but it’s enough to dim some of the fiery anger in her veins and leave room for something that feels suspiciously like doubt to creep in. It’s enough to let her feel sticky and dirty and _wrong_ at the thought of exposing Kara Danvers as Supergirl.

“Lena?” Her name slips from Kara’s mouth like a prayer.

Lena walks away before the sheer desperation of it can reach her.

This will shatter her, if she lets it, and she is so tired of being broken. Why does everyone she lets carve out a place in her heart feel the need to take a baseball bat to the rest of the inside of her chest? At this point, why does she bother letting anyone in?

Lena walks past the stairs, past the ballroom, and out of the building before anyone can stop her.

She finds her driver leaning against the side of the car. David looks surprised to see her so soon but he recovers well and starts to reach for the door. Lena holds out a hand to stop him before she can think better of it.

“Give me the keys.”

“Miss Luthor,” he starts, forehead creasing with concern. She cuts him off before he can continue.

“The keys,” she echoes, reaching into one of the discreet pockets of her dress for a slim wallet. Lena pushes a hundred dollar bill into his hand. “Here, for a taxi home.”

“Please let me drive, ma’am. I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”

“Is this my car or not?” Lena arches her brow imperiously, and the man caves in to the sheer force of her will. Everything else in her life is spinning wildly out of control but at least she still has this. She is still in command of _something_ in her world, and she clings to the thought with an almost feral sort of desperation. 

David drops the keys into her palm and Lena firmly ignores the worry clouding his features as he takes a step away from the car.

“Thank you,” She bites out, but after a moment, she softens. The poor man is innocent in all this, after all. “I’ll meet you at the office tomorrow.”

Then Lena gets into the driver’s seat and speeds away, leaving everything behind her.

If she had looked back, she would’ve seen David turn and bolt for the hotel doors, running to find someone, anyone, to ask just what the hell is going on.

Lena drives until she’s left the city behind her too.

When her phone starts to ring- Andrea, she knows, even before she looks at the screen- Lena throws it into the backseat and rolls up the partition.

Nothing about this night has gone according to plan, and Lena can’t tell whether the sudden eddy of emotion starting to swirl in her chest is disappointment or relief.

Lena doesn’t know which one she wants it to be and she’s more than a little afraid to find out.

* * *

Two minutes.

Kara has two minutes to pull herself together and walk back inside a room full of people she doesn’t want to see and accept an award she really doesn’t think she even deserves anymore, if she ever deserved it at all. Journalists are supposed to honest, open, in constant pursuit of the truth. Kara has spent years hiding it from her best friend. The thought of heading back into that room to be presented with a Pulitzer makes her almost want to fly herself all the way into the airless void of space because she’s been nothing more than a fraud. She hasn’t felt this small or cold or alone since being freed from the Phantom Zone.

Kara allows herself one of those minutes to cry in a little corridor off to the side of the foyer, then spends half of the other minute wiping away any evidence of her tears. She gets back to the ballroom with ten seconds left to spare on her internal countdown, and finds Alex immediately glued to her side.

From the look on her sister’s face, Kara knows she didn’t do as good a job as she thought disguising her tears. It makes her feel even worse, the clear concern written across Alex’s features- brow starting to furrow, lips pressing into a thinning line. Kara wants to go back, to be better at feigning a smile. Kara wants not to have ruined the whole evening for Alex on top of everything else she’s managed to ruin tonight. The pool of guilt and regret in the pit of her stomach widens into an ocean and threatens to swallow her whole. For a moment, she considers letting it.

The hassled-looking coordinator ends up being the one to introduce Kara. She knows she shouldn’t, but hates him a little for that. An hour ago, she hadn’t even known Lena was going to announce her but now that she knows who should have been on that stage but isn’t, _well_-

Kara’s almost glad when the baddie of the week attacks just as she steps up onto the dais. The only thing she thinks she would’ve been able to do if she‘d actually reached the podium is cry.

The suit comes alive around her as soon as she yanks off her glasses, nanites spreading across her skin in seconds.

It’s time for her to be Supergirl now; she pushes Kara Danvers to the back of her brain and it’s the closest thing to comfort that she’s felt since watching Lena Luthor walk away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just the beginning, I swear.
> 
> Also yeah, I’m writing Supergirl fanfiction again. Yay!
> 
> (For those of you here wondering why I’m posting this instead of the next part of my soulmate!au, um... I’m working on that too.)
> 
> Leave a review, join me in blissfully ignoring canon. :)


	2. Chapter 2

Lena goes back to work. More specifically, back to work in her lab.

It’s what she always does, how she’s always coped when the world decides it’s high time to deliver another knockout blow to the youngest of the Luthor line. Coming up with new ideas for inventions, running experiments, testing hypotheses- the lab is the only place where Lena truly feels like she actually fits in her skin.

Sure, when it comes to bravado in the boardroom, Lena can ooze the kind of confidence that makes heads turn and ears listen with laughable ease. She specializes in it, has carefully cultivated an aura of effortless intimidation, frightening competence, and little more than a touch of raw sex appeal with the way she walks, talks, and dresses. Everything, from the way she tilts her head to the smiles she levels at L-Corp’s investors, is the result of careful engineering and constant practice on Lena’s part.

For better or worse, she’s a Luthor, and that leaves her with no room for error when it comes to how she chooses to present herself to the world. Where most people grew up learning how ride bicycles and playing with Legos, Lena Luthor spent the majority of her childhood surrounded by private tutors hired to teach her everything from etiquette to foreign languages.

By the time she was six, Lena was fluent in over half a dozen languages and passably conversational in another eight. By the time she was nine, she knew the names and faces of every important figure on a geopolitical level, as well as the foreign policies of each of their respective areas of authority. By the time Lena was eleven, she was teaching herself science and mathematics at a collegiate level. Brilliance in the Luthor household was just a starting point; Lex and Lena were always meant to go beyond.

And well, Lex had managed to do just that, in a way. To disastrous results, of course, but still.

_Never let it be said that a Luthor can ever be anything less than exceptional_, Lena thinks, a wry smile on her lips as she shuts down the lights in her lab for the night. Exceptionally homicidal, in Lex’s case. Exceptionally oblivious, in her own.

Privately, Lena thinks that if Supergirl had been anyone other than Kara Danvers, she would have seen it sooner. She would have seen it herself. She wouldn’t have needed her brother’s last words to rip the wool away from her eyes.

Lena had played a part in keeping herself in the dark, burying the truth with every subconscious denial of the facts right in front of her eyes. The missed lunches when disaster struck somewhere in the city, the coincidental departures when Supergirl needed to make an appearance, the mysterious absences at CatCo whenever the flutter of a cape could be seen in the sky. Hell, the very first day in her office, when Kara had gotten flustered at the thought of testing Lena’s alien detection device.

Glasses, a ponytail, a slouch, and all of the pastel sweater sets in the world shouldn’t have come close to being enough to fool Lena Luthor.

But it did. It had. Because she’d let it.

Because she’d wanted so desperately to have Kara Danvers as a friend.

_And maybe more_, whispers a traitorous little voice inside her head.

Lena firmly squashes the thought under her heel as she makes her way out of the lab and back up to her office.

It’s late, so late that aside from the round-the-clock security team and the nighttime cleaning crew, Lena is virtually alone in the building. Just the way she likes it.

Lena kicks off her heels as soon as the door swings shut behind her and pads over to the bar to pour herself a drink. The floor of her office is cold and smooth beneath her bare feet. After all the hours she’s spent hunched over a microscope today, she’s half-tempted to lie down, press her cheek against the cool tiles, and fall right asleep.

Lena ends up on the couch, a glass of horrifyingly expensive whiskey in hand, the rest of the bottle sitting on the table in front of her. The amber liquid slides down her throat smoothly enough to justify the cost. She’s filled the glass higher than usual tonight; she drains it faster than usual too. It doesn’t take long for the alcohol to hit her, especially not on an empty stomach. She hasn’t eaten since before retreating into her lab, which was...

Lena hums quietly in thought, the razor-sharp edge of her brain’s higher functions dulled enough by the alcohol warming her veins for the memory not to hurt as badly as it should.

Ah, yes.

Sometime yesterday night, after making it all the way out of the city in her car, driving all the way back, changing into something more appropriate for a lab environment at her apartment, and speeding all the way back to L-Corp.

Sometime before the big reveal that had been too little and far too late to do anything other than reopen all of Lena’s wounds, leaving her gutted and bleeding out and all too eager to make a hasty, tactical retreat from the situation entirely. Lena’s always been the kind of solitary creature who prefers to tend to her injuries alone and in peace, away from anyone else who might promise her help only to cause more harm.

Even as a child, Lena had preferred the quiet isolation of hours spent holed up in her room to anything else the outside world might have offered.

No, that’s not quite right.

She’d been outgoing, before. Outgoing enough to love being outdoors, safe in her mother’s arms. Her earliest memories are blurry and half-faded, but she can still remember fragments, bits and pieces of the life she had lived before becoming a Luthor. Staring up at the sky on a moonless night, grass tickling her bare shoulders, a woman’s hand pointing up at the stars. It’s not much, but it’s something. There are still flickers of brightness somewhere in the otherwise dark recesses of her mind.

Of course, it had all ended that day at the lake. The day her mother drowned while Lena stood still, rendered mute and frozen with fear. That’s when Lena had realized she’d do more harm to the world than good. When she’d started to think it would just be better for everyone if she stayed far, far away.

For the longest time, being alone was better. Being alone was safe. The less people she let near her, the less people she could hurt- and the less people could hurt her in turn. It was logical, rational; it was problem-solving at its finest to Lena’s perpetually terrified younger self.

Lena had been fine with her self-imposed isolation for years.

After all, she hadn’t been completely alone. She’d had science and school and the love of her big brother, the only person Lena had let past her at-arms-length policy of social interaction.

And then she grew up, and the world decided to remind Lena just how much it could hurt her by slipping the stiletto blade of Lex’s genocidal tendencies and attempts at world domination right between her ribs and twisting, just to make sure the lesson really stuck this time around.

Just like that, Lena was on her own again, and she told herself to be fine with it and she _was_. Lena was fine with it up until Kara Danvers walked through her door, flashed a sunny smile, held out her hand like a lifeline and then-

Then Lena found herself _wanting_.

Wanting to have a friend. Wanting to see her smile. Wanting to _make_ her smile. Wanting to have that smile aimed directly at _her_. Wanting that smile to be _for_ her.

Wanting not to be so alone that it _hurt_, day in and day out, just to breathe and function and exist.

Lena had wanted so badly that she’d let herself stay ignorant- for _years_\- of a truth that should have been apparent from the start.

Now she’s angry. Lena is so angry she might well spontaneously combust with it, burst into flames and turn into something ancient and elemental and too tempestuous to be controlled. Something that will burn, and burn entirely, leaving nothing but ash and devastation in her wake. She just isn’t sure exactly who she’s angry at, anymore.

But most importantly- and most painfully- she’s all alone.

Lena Luthor is alone again and it’s like she’s been dragged back down to the lake.

Like she’s standing at the edge of the water watching someone drown, only it isn’t her mother anymore- it’s her. And she’s paralyzed again, pinned in place like a butterfly on a board. There’s nothing she can do to help. She doesn’t even know if she would want to help if she could.

Lena stands on the edge and watches herself drown from a distance.

Lena curls up on the cushions of her office’s couch and drinks until she can forget she was ever near the water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, angsty introspection. What can I say? I just love me some character study, especially when it comes to someone as complex as Lena.
> 
> Next up: Kara’s chapter. (And perhaps... A conversation?) ;)
> 
> Leave a review, pour a Luthor a drink. 
> 
> Just kidding, one really shouldn't indulge her unhealthy coping mechanisms.
> 
> Leave a review and give Lena a blanket and a mug of hot chocolate instead.


End file.
